Word: atomize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...threat is still considered to be remote; there is no hard evidence that any terrorist group, including bin Laden's, has a finished nuclear weapon in its arsenal. But not long ago, anthrax seemed a distant threat. And it is possible for the bad guys to assemble an atom bomb with contraband uranium and off-the-shelf parts. "It's not particularly probable, but it's possible,'" says Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The difficulty is that we are dealing with a wide range of low-probability cases...
...Honor for combat in World War I, made the OSS hospitable to many communist agents. Much moral confusion flowed from the fact that Stalin, one of history's true monsters, was for the moment an ally. The Germans and Japanese never penetrated the secret of the Manhattan Project's atom bomb, but the Soviets (through Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs and others...
...comparing the World Trade Center tragedy with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [ESSAY, Sept. 24], she wrote that the terrorists "targeted ordinary civilians...working in their offices, walking on the streets." She might have noted that the U.S. targeted and killed immense numbers of civilians when we used atom bombs on two Japanese cities at the end of World War II. In the midst of our grief and outrage, Americans need to examine our conscience and perhaps thereby temper the magnitude of the U.S. response with the humane values of justice, proportion and compassion. BILL EVANS Pueblo, Colo...
...argues, is to protect against "short yardage"--attacks on bridges, tunnels, power plants, chemical-storage facilities and refineries. "There are hundreds of these targets," says a Pentagon official, "and attacking them with conventional means--a truck full of explosives--is a heck of a lot easier than building an atom bomb or a chemical weapon...
...image. Terrorism is sometimes described (in a frustrated, oh-the-burdens-of-great-power tone of voice) as "asymmetrical warfare." So what? Most of history is a pageant of asymmetries. It is mostly the asymmetries that cause history to happen--an obscure Schickelgruber nearly destroys Europe; a mere atom, artfully diddled, incinerates a city. Elegant perplexity puts too much emphasis on the "asymmetrical" side of the phrase and not enough on the fact that it is, indeed, real warfare. Asymmetry is a concept. War is, as we see, blood and death...